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Monthly Archives: May 2014

Last Saturday I went to go and see the newest American version of Godzilla and here are my good, bad and points about the film, warning this will contain a few spoilers.

The Good
One of the good parts I liked in the film was the beginning showing that a large creature was residing in the Philippines/ Japan and then the really cool visual effects of whatever monster was destroying the nuclear plant. With the destruction of filling towers from the kids perspective seemed really moving because unless you’ve seen that happen then this is close as it would get to people who haven’t.

The next good part of the film is Bryan Cranston, even though he is in the film for a short amount of time his performance is good and strong. After the plant getting destroyed after the monster attack he tries to get back and find the information that he had collected on the day and it shows the commitment to his character that he would go to prison for finding out what actually happens, even though he does die in the film it is rather sad on how he dies his performance is good for the film.

Then of course the main good part of the film is when Godzilla appears. First of there was some criticism that he did look fat but to be honest didn’t really see that. The model design for it was really great and was designed a lot better than the 98 film. It was well designed and it did rather remind me of the original Godzilla film which seemed to be rather a homage to the original.

Finally the good part of the film is the editing and technical side of the film. In the third act of the film the army went on a recovery mission for a nuke and they were able to do a good editing technique where they used the locator device and showed it side by side where it then showed the group progressing towards it which I think was a really great technique to use.

The Bad
There were only a few things I thought were bad about the film was one it was rather more focused around the humans of the film, but majority was the army on how they were going to deal with the MUTO threat, which lead them to using nuclear weapons on them, even though they feed of the stuff.

The next thing that bothered me was that the army seemed rather incompetent when it came to dealing with the first MUTO as it was able to release a EMP blast that took out all electronics but they kept on using things like planes and boats but I think that also is a double meaning that we require technology more and more that we forget about analogue times.

Next was the MUTO, I didn’t have much of a problem with the but the problem is that I wish they would have went with a kaiju that was popular in the original films like Mothra or King Ghidorah and then if the film’s were popular with the audiences then bring in villains like Destoryah or MechaGodzilla.

The MUTO
This film is possibly the best film that has been from a American point of Godzilla, it wipes out the 1998 film and its totally enjoyable.

The fight scene in the third act with the MUTO’S and Godzilla reminded me of the old Japanese films when he throws one of them through the building. Also there’s a scene where Godzilla uses his flame/dragon breath attack and it looked really cool. It also was another reminded of the Godzilla films where his plates glow up and he just blasts them away.

Over all this is a good film, there are a lot of small clues of the classic Godzilla and it makes it enjoyable to new audience. I would reccomend people to atleast look into the Japanese series cause they are really good to watch. With it being 60 years of Godzilla I hope that there will be another 20, or hopefully 60.

Pacific Rim a movie that combines Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and Destroy All Monsters, has a massive amount of visual effects in it. One of the scenes depicts the lead character walking into the base that houses one of the Jaegers, a giant robot that two people control, and also roughly 40-50 people as well. But on the visual effects breakdown it shows a giant green screen room and it has roughly 10 or so people in the room and then there were added layers of characters that were added on in post. It also shows the after effects that are go into the room design is like with the added lighting and colour that gets add on which I find interesting because I thought that it was a real base so that, but with the Jaeger added in.

Another part is the design of one of the Kaiju where they show the changes that they make and how the basic design is used to create the other Kaiju in the film.

Another part of the film is the battle between a Jaeger, Gypsy Danger I think, and a Kaiju and it was a 3d model design and it was before they added in before they add in the colour and textures to the final product. They also then add in the buildings that get destroyed and add in the floating debris as well which is a really remarkable effect. They then reshow the footage and add in the different layers like the city landscape, Jaeger, colours and the lighting effects that highlight the Jaeger. I think that this is a remarkable thing and it shows how much CGI has progressed over the many years.

Since Warner Bros and Legendary are making the new Godzilla film which celebrates the 60 years of the legendary Japanese monster, and for this reason I am going to be reviewing the Good and the Bad of the first Godzilla movie, the ‘98 American version and the 2014 version when its released.

The Good-

For this film I found it originally to be a good film but then growing up watching countless monster films I found this film to be more of a let down. But I will bring up them in the next section.

The first thing that I liked about it was that the promotion for this film was well handled and awesome to see as they only showed parts of the monster and slogans that said ‘his foot is along as this bus’ or ‘his head is as big as this billboard’ and with promotion like this people expected it to be a good film but it turned out to be a disappointment.

The next thing that I liked about the film was the other minor actors that are in the film, like Harry Shearer, and Hank Azaria and even Nancy Cartwright, even if it seems like a Simpsons reunion they do have the better moments of the film.

The final part of the film that I like is the fact that Godzilla was able to out whit the US army by dodging missiles that have probably damaged more of New York then what Godzilla did.

The Bad-

With this film there were a lot of bad things about the film.

First there was the rather terrible casting choice as Matthew Broderick as the main lead, this was rather a terrible choice because he was a bland actor and rather annoying character and also had similar designs to the nerdy characters from Stargate and Independence Day. If they got somebody who was nerdy but not a bad actor then it may have been better.

The next thing I thought made the film bad was Godzilla being a rather terrible design, it looked way to CGI and I found the original Godzilla to be a better design and that was a guy in a suit. It was better designed then what the 98 version was and the Godzilla story was better than what the story of Godzilla was when it was a Iguana that was mutated from the nuclear fallout test, where as the original Godzilla was awoken from the nuclear fallout.

The next thing that I thought was a disappointment was that they had a Michael Lerner and Lorry Goldman doing a take on the two famous critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. The reason why is that it is that they had gave very negative reviews on the directors previous films and the bad thing about it was that the director didn’t even have them killed off in the film. I think that this would have been better because even Siskel had stated that it would have been better for them to kill them off in the film by the monster but they still survive at the end of the film.

And the final thing that I hate about this film is that when they arrive at Madison Square Garden and from that point onward it seemed to be a total rip off from Jurassic Park. They took several scenes from the film including the shillouete scene, the gum ball trip and then Godzilla chasing them in a cab through New York. This makes me think more that there in very little originality in films anymore.

The Baby Zillas-

The biggest thing in the film that got me thinking was at the end of the film where it was revealed that there was one surviving Baby Zilla that wasn’t destroyed when the army bombarded MSG, which makes me think that the army isn’t that good of a shot, But then this lead to the possibility of a future sequel, which they never got around to making as the film had bombed, but then as most late 90’s early 2000 films it was made into a kids television series that was strangely animated and felt like the characters where designed for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, other than that it was a better cartoon that featured a lot of Godzillas adversaries and was more enjoyable then the film.

Lets hope that the new film will be a lot better than what this was. Rating 3/10